WASHINGTON, Oct. 2The Central
Intelligence Agency is getting a very bad press in dispatches
from Vietnam to American newspapers and in articles originating
in Washington. Like the Supreme Court when under fire, the C.I.A.
cannot defend itself in public retorts to criticisms of its activities
as they occur. But, unlike the the Supreme Court, the C.I.A.
has no open record of its activities on which the public can
base a judgment of the validity of the criticisms. Also, the
agency is precluded from using the indirect defensive tactic
which is constantly employed by all other Government units under
critical file.
This tactic is to give information to
the press, under a seal of confidence, that challenges or refutes
the critics. But the C.I.A. cannot father such inspired articles,
because to do so would require some disclosure of its activities.
And not only does the effectiveness of the agency depend on the
secrecy of its operations. Every President since the C.I.A. was
created has protected this secrecy from claimantsCongress
or the public through the press, for examplesof the right
to share any part of it.

With High Frequency

This Presidential policy has not,
however, always restrained other executive units from going confidentially
to the press with attacks on C.I.A. operations in their common
field of responsibility. And usually it has been possible to
deduce these operational details from the nature o the attacks.
But the peak of the practice has recently been reached in Vietnam
and in Washington. This is revealed almost every day now in dispatches
from reportersin close touch with intra-Administration
critics of the C.I.A.with excellent reputations for reliability.
One reporter in this category is Richard
Starnes of the Scripps-Howard newspapers. Today, under a Saigon
dateline, he related that, "according to a high United States
source here, twice the C.I.A. flatly refused to carry out instructions
from Ambassador Henry Cabot Lodge . . . [and] in one instance
frustrated a plan of action Mr. Lodge brought from Washington
because the agency disagreed with it." Among the views attributed
to United States officials on the scene, including one described
as a "very high American official . . . who has spent much
of his life in the service of democracy . . . are the following:

The C.I.A.'s growth was "likened
to a malignancy" which the "very high official was
not sure even the White House could control . . . any longer."
"If the United States ever experiences [an attempt at a
coup to overthrow the Government] it will come from the C.I.A.
and not the Pentagon." The agency "represents a tremendous
power and total unaccountability to anyone."

Disorderly Government

Whatever else these passages disclose,
they most certainly establish that representatives of other Executive
branches have expanded their war against the C.I.A. from the
inner government councils to the American people via the press.
And published simultaneously are details of the agency's operations
in Vietnam that can come only from the same critical official
sources. This is disorderly government. And the longer the President
tolerates itthe period already is considerablethe
greater will grow its potentials of hampering the real war against
the Vietcong and the impression of a very indecisive Administration
in Washington.
The C.I.A. may be guilty as charged.
Since it cannot, or at any rate will not, openly defend its record
in Vietnam, or defend it by the same confidential press "briefings"
employed by its critics, the public is not in a position to judge.
Nor is this department, which sought and failed to get even the
outlines of the agency's case in rebuttal. But Mr. Kennedy will
have to make a judgment if the spectacle of war within the Executive
branch is to be ended and the effective functioning of the C.I.A.
preserved. And when he makes this judgment, hopefully he also
will make it public, as well as the appraisal of fault on which
it is based.
Doubtless recommendations as to what
his judgment should be were made to him today by Secretary of
Defense McNamara and General Taylor on their return from their
fact-finding expedition into the embattled official jungle in
Saigon.